It's been more than four years since Harris was shot and killed by a Phoenix police officer. He died on Jan. 11, 2019. For his father, Roland Harris, the day marked yet another opportunity to call for justice for his son.
“We just want justice," Roland Harris told the small crowd. “Me and his mom, we wish that we could have our son back.”
Protesters and family members lit candles and laid flowers on the concrete outside City Hall in memory of Jacob Harris.
Katya Schwenk
No officers charged for killing teen
A March investigation by The Appeal, published in collaboration with Phoenix New Times, detailed Roland Harris’ fight for justice for his son and the lack of police accountability for his death.The night Jacob Harris died, the 19-year-old and three friends — Jeremiah Triplett, then 20 years old, Sariah Busani, 19, and Johnny Reed, 14 — robbed a Whataburger in Phoenix. They fled unaware they were being tracked by a police surveillance plane and followed by unmarked police vehicles. The officers didn't attempt a traffic stop. Instead, one vehicle used a grappler device to disable the car that Harris and the others were riding in.
Harris jumped out and ran from the police. Almost immediately, two officers shot at the teen, striking him multiple times. He was then shot again with rubber bullets and bitten by a police dog, aerial footage showed. Harris was pronounced dead at a hospital.
None of the officers involved in Harris' death faced criminal charges or other disciplinary measures for the killing. Although Roland Harris filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Officers Kristopher Bertz, the case was dismissed by a federal court. Bertz later demanded the distraught father pay the officer’s $40,000 attorney fees.
But that has not stopped Harris from seeking justice for his son. “We hold every last Phoenix police officer who was on the scene that day accountable for Jacob’s murder,” he said on May 13.
Friends charged in murder seek justice
Thanks to an Arizona law that allows people to be held responsible for a death if they are committing a felony at the time, Reed, Triplett and Busani were all charged with first-degree murder in Jacob Harris’ death. In this case, the felony was the Whataburger robbery, prosecutors alleged.Triplett received a 30-year sentence, Busani received 10 years, and Reed — only 14 at the time — received 15.
“The Phoenix Police Department got away with an execution,” Cat Brooks, an Oakland-based organizer and co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, told Phoenix New Times. “And then, in addition to that, the incarceration of children — of babies — for a murder that the Phoenix Police Department committed.”
Shawanna Chambers, Reed’s aunt, who raised him, spoke alongside Harris to call for justice for the teen. “Everybody in this community has let him down,” she said. “As a child, at 14 years old, we all made mistakes that we were able to come back from. He will not be able to come back from this.”
Standing in front of City Hall on May 13, Chambers, Harris and other family members demanded the teens be released and that officers involved in the incident be held accountable.
They also called on the city to disband the Special Assignments Unit, which is a specialized police task force — essentially a SWAT team — that was involved in Jacob Harris’ death.
The Phoenix Police Department did not reply to a request for comment about the protest.
Brooks told New Times she hoped that the rally showed that Harris’ death — and his friends’ incarceration — was not going to be forgotten. For too long, she said, the families had been “languishing without any type of accountability, any type of justice.”
“They count on folks getting tired, right, that they’re just going to give up and go away," Brooks said. "But we’re not.”
